


Mariner

by seitsensarvi



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Mer Erwin, Nautical, Sailor Levi, Tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 03:26:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13849095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seitsensarvi/pseuds/seitsensarvi
Summary: The captain knew the oceans to be unkind. He liked that about them, wouldn’t have wished for too gentle a lull. He liked the wild thing in the way one appraised a challenging dueling partner, their moves unpredictable, never ceasing to try and make him dodge and dance and nearly, sometimes, when he was feeling playful enough, sweep him off his feet.





	Mariner

**Author's Note:**

> With sincere thanks to literary advisor [35grams](http://archiveofourown.org/users/caxxe/pseuds/35grams).

  

Levi bandaged the raw flesh of his palms once he was done writing.  
  
He did not linger on the ridges that hollowed out with time. The marks had deepened from the center first, then around the knuckles, winding to reach the back of his hands where the rifts split into valleys. One day, their rivers may reach the sea.

He attempted to file away the flaring hot pain and the accompanying memory of rope with considerably less success.

He knew the oceans to be unkind. He liked that about them, wouldn't have wished for too gentle a lull. He liked the wild thing in the way one appraised a challenging dueling partner, their moves unpredictable, never ceasing to try and make him dodge and dance and nearly, sometimes, when he was feeling playful enough, sweep him off his feet.

 

 

The mast had broken last. It had descended in a clap of thunder, tearing through shredded sails in a merciless shatter across the deck, the dismembered wood shaking under men's feet — the few of them still upright. The rest underneath.   
  
The captain had waited for the next wave through gritted teeth, for this carcass of a ship to crack and the cords to be taken from his bleeding hands to the bottom of the sea. He considered release.

Had he not been blinded by cold or salt or sweat, he would have seen the wall of water rise up instead of feeling it a handful of seconds too late. Before it crashed, he had yelled for his crew to hold on, to jump; he couldn't remember. A single cry had replied. The captain could not tell whether it was a call of acknowledgement or the sound of a dying man.

 

 

His fingers warmed to the last glow of embers in the fireplace. It was much too small a fire, and far too big a room to be of any use. Perhaps, if he stepped in it. But the room was soon to be left, not his. The cargo had arrived earlier that day. The following, he would gather his crew. The next, they would depart. Levi wondered if they could not shrink the two remaining days to just one. Half, if the men were capable.

 He stood and paced, glanced at the papers on the desk. Not for the first time, he wondered if merchants had been given reason to be suspicious, or if negotiating fees and schedules had always been such a godless task. He forgot every time. 

The captain did not care for any of the wealthy's properties or titles. If he could have spared it, he would have been content simply to walk the harbor and hop over any railway that looked halfway maintained, let loose anyone's sails and go as far as the wind would carry. He did not care for this one commission any more than he did the last; it had been less than soul-crushing to omit the most irrelevant details. Valuables weren't worth a dime when they hit the bottom of the sea. Every captain sinks ships.  
  
The afternoon bled into the evening in under a blink. Levi pocketed the records for what he hoped was the last night in the city. He felt restless. It still called to him, the sea. He missed its voice. He had long since rested, and tended to his most tender limbs. He had long since scrubbed the last grain of salt off his skin.

 

*****

 

The captain descended the stairs two at a time, minding the odd creaking one near the bottom. "North North-West?" He called to the first shipmate for confirmation. He roamed through weathered maps.

The first shipmate confirmed and marked the route down, then, conversational, asked if the captain wanted to try his hand at their improved sextant. Surely this one would allow for an easier read than he had ever known. The captain did not know how one could improve a sextant, so he did not feign to care.  
  
"We'll stop for half a day," he instructed instead. His finger tapped on the cross marking another harbor. "A day from there."  
  
"More unfinished business?" the first shipmate guessed. "Captain," they added as an afterthought.  
  
"Remind me not to bring Zacharias," Levi said not to answer.

 The first shipmate barked a laugh. It was always a sight to behold whenever one self-important man or another addressed the lieutenant, guessing his rank from his stature alone, only for Levi to step in and reply.

 "Godspeed then, captain,” they bid. “Also, timing’s tight."

“Hell with this pig's timing,” the captain replied.  
  
The door to Mrs Ral's slanted house groaned loud when it was pulled. The captain watched her with heavy eyes, but hers were heavier. He apologized for the lack of burial ground and for the lack of news in so long a time. She had expected.

 She had stopped expecting after a year.

 She only wanted to know if he cared for a cup. She said they could talk. She asked if anyone else beside him had survived. The half day of leave became a single hour. The first shipmate knew better than to say aloud they were glad the captain didn't stay for tea.

 

  
*****

 

He tracked the ghosts of marine lights at the surface of darkened waters until late into the night. He spotted glimmers dancing right beside the ship with a curious eye a consequent number of times before he would catch himself, and wonder why he was even doing it, for hours on end. He was fascinated then, by storms and lost sailors and castaways, for no defendable reason. 

Levi didn't sleep. 

He had told the new crew about the ones who’d preceded them, them and the lost ship. They had nodded knowingly. They had never even asked about the bandages.

They had not caught their captain in sleep-deprived reveries often enough to worry, be it for him or most reasonably themselves, but they'd seen him perched atop a mast or sat over the rails enough times to wonder if he sometimes wouldn't have preferred that there be no ship at all.  
  
He had awoken on an unknown stretch of sand, cradled between algae and the receding tide. He had mistrusted his own staggering breaths but his lungs had defiantly held air in, miraculous and dry, and once his head had sufficiently spun and his neck had sufficiently cracked, he’d found he could still, to the price of great effort, open his eyes, and almost see.  
  
He’d expected to wake up beneath the surface, drowned and gone. He hadn’t expected to wake up at all. Sparks of gold against blue remained insisting when he closed his eyes.

When morning rose and he tethered at the edge of sleep, he could still see them. Sometimes, he woke up gasping.

 

 

The captain let the wind lash out on his face and pull him back. He needed to retreat below deck soon. For a last, lone minute, he watched again the expanse of black and blue and calm nothing laid out as far as he could see.

He had thought the ocean more insidious, crueler than to sink so familiarly low as to possess the same fingers and hands and arms men had, but that day the ocean had sent fingers and hands and arms to pull him out of the water, to throw his head forward, then back.

He recalled arms wrapped around his middle, holding him above the water line.

 

*

 

  
The Magnolia's crew went back and forth, south and north between harbors. A year during, the captain met not a raging wave he couldn't tame.  
  
He glimpsed at coastlines down specifically picked, unfamiliar roads and avoided shortcuts just to sate a curiosity. He tempted a devil when, alone in between errands, he brought his ship through vicious deltas and, once, purposely, even a tempestuous patch of sky. He set foot on land far less than was necessary when the rest of the crew stayed at a port, when they visited one's homeland, when they passed through cities. They said nothing to his face, but he'd heard the first shipmate speak to the lieutenant, and he knew they agreed.

 The following year, they roamed oily seas once fierce. At times, the waters Levi remembered restless cared not even rise to meet him. The captain would have nearly laughed. He brought the small ship farther than he knew her to safely thrive, but the Magnolia obeyed him swiftly, offered her sails to the softest breath of favorable wind like she understood his goal, single-minded and stubborn, even on the days himself didn't.  
  
When the third year came around, the captain considered forgetting. He would convince himself he'd followed a mirage, had sought out a dream with no other grounds than one too many disturbed nights and an unsettled longing for something. It might only be the sea. Men often left their homes to cross oceans for less than that. He nearly apologized to Zoë, to Zacharias, for even considering further wasting their time, but they did not recall the wreck. They had not yet been there to be thrown overboard, had not felt the man-made ground tear right under them, and even then.

They had not jumped with their arms open, foolish and entranced and utterly, absolutely right.

Levi returned from one lone venture, only coming back to himself once his boat had met the sand, all to be dragged to a ridiculously stuffed inn. He didn’t mind the town so much. Its heavy balconies spun above the pavement of small streets, its relief told tales of time passing. It evoked no memories.

“More heroics today, captain?” The first mate asked teasingly when he appeared.

The captain huffed. He untied the cravat around his neck and folded it into his jacket. “What even for?”

“Dunno, whatever it is you're even going out there for? Thinking? Oh, stories?”

“Sure, those,” the captain drawled. “Writers are lining up to tell the tale of our glorious merchant ship, sailing down the broadest roads known to man to unload her shitty freight from one harbor to the next.”

“Come on, cap’n,” the lieutenant added, handing him a glass filled to the rim. “Not only shitty freight. We carry liquor at least once a year.”

 Zoë agreed. “Have some more imagination. You know those tales are bullshit.”

“Yeah,” the captain conceded, drowning his glass and resting it sharply on the messy table. “They are.”

Levi allowed the chatter and warm glow to ease him into at least having a seat. Even among his men, his hand rested over the knife in his trousers' pockets. Ashore, they were rarely alone. He wouldn't go so far as trust anyone he hadn't picked himself, but the crew had long stopped taking offense at whatever mildly insulting habit he displayed that season. He would have nearly believed Zoë when they'd explained, from sworn experience, how the reputation of any captain was best solely built on tales than truth. He'd nearly asked them to write him a story.

When the torches on the walls had more than sufficiently imprinted their light at the back of his eyes, and he feared the white spots may never leave, Levi bid his shipmates a decent night and walked back down the pier. The night was warm, filled with mellow scents of summer and heat in the air. Days like these, the longing called harder. The captain still did not sleep.

 

*

 

He had regained consciousness on barren shores again. There had been a raging storm the first time, then, far more terrifyingly, an undefinable will to let himself be led. There had been ships lost no more and no more men drowned but he, when alone, had inevitably lost himself as he'd swum amongst removed creeks, as he'd gone chasing the horizon with nothing but a pair of oars. He'd watched every wave trying to understand their language. He'd tried to understand what it was he couldn't see, that needed him to come closer, that begged him to stay away.

 

*

 

The clouds met them halfway through an ordinary return voyage.  
  
Like every mariner, Levi had agreed to age a thousand years when he'd learnt the sea. Yet, here, all the centuries in the world wouldn’t have let him catch this one faint turn of the wind until it meant not only a too-persisting gale and an obstinately corrected course, but tempest. 

He’d avoided weather for so many months he'd come to believe he would never meet a single deviant gust of wind again, but the clouds soon roared. The captain knew in his gut before he knew from his instruments that all the hands on deck may not suffice to take them through.

 

*

 

“You really do wish to die,” the voice said.  
  
Levi stirred from a stinging, shaky dream. He thrashed once before he located his limbs, hands flying to the knife at his boot but his boots weren't here. He fought to keep his eyes open.  
  
The voice was a man's. The voice was not a man's. The voice spoke his name without knowing it, without a sound falling from unmoving lips. Levi’s back hurt. His skull hurt until the voice secured him in its hold, and he realized those were instead hands, lowering him gently to cold ground. The voice soothed him.  
  
The sea hadn't got a voice he remembered. He remembered only the hands.

The voice watched. Briefly, its eyes fell and caught Levi watching back, trying to make out its contours and failing and it paused, like it, he, had not meant to see, or expected to be seen. Levi wondered how desolate a state he had to be in for a savior's face to turn away from him at the sound of his ragged breathing, instead of showing any small sign of relief.  
  
Levi didn't mind the exhaustion anymore. He didn’t mind the cold ground either. Tiredness choked him more readily than it had in years, and he only wanted to rest his eyes for a little while. He hoped the voice would continue talking.

 

  
*

  

He opened his eyes again as the not-man emerged from a pool of water, below, to sit on the ground where the captain lay. He understood only then that the voice really had a form, not quite entirely human, not quite entirely sea. The voice had strong arms and stronger shoulders, and scales over them, and scales over his legs, and no legs at all. They caught unseen light like the pieces of a shattered mirror, like rivulets of water passing through sharpened rocks, darkening down with depth, with skin, not-skin. But his eyes, flickering pools of ice.

The captain wanted to ask who he was, why he was, where they were. He couldn't understand, then, why it seemed like he already knew the answer to each of his questions, and all he inquired about was a name. He couldn't remember a name.

“Erwin,” the voice said. This time his lips moved when he spoke, flashing rows of sharp teeth.

 

*

 

The captain tried the name on his tongue. He spoke it to the not-man and matched it to his frightening silhouette, to his unusual frame, sharp and sculpted and refined in the most fascinating ways.  
  
Levi should have felt alarmed, panicked. Uneasy. He tried. The walls of the cave dripped drops down to the ground, and he knew not when, not where. He had nowhere to flee there, nowhere to hide. He didn't wish to hide. Instead he felt no longer hurting, no longer searching. No longer searching. He told Erwin.  
  
Erwin said it had a price. It cost more for every minute he stole. He hated stealing. Didn't the captain?  
  
“From who,” the captain asked, “Exactly?”  
  
"Perhaps not stealing, then. Borrowing," Erwin said. His hair, gold-white tendrils, not quite hair, fanned around his head above the water where he floated, like the halos of saints.   
  
"Mine? Too much on my hands,” Levi lied, but time truly hardly mattered to him. “Captains don't stand watch."  
  
"But you do."

Levi glared from the corner of his eye, didn't inquire how he knew. “Small crew. Your point?”  
  
“They still haven't healed, have they?” Erwin asked in turn, staring at Levi's hands.

The captain's breath hitched. He saw himself falling, and be caught again. He remembered hues of blues piercing through ink-black nights, and the creature smiled half a knowing smile.

“Would you let me?”

“We’ve met before,” Levi stated in place of an answer. He rose. He walked to Erwin until he could look down at him. He was welcome.

Erwin didn't refute his say.

Levi hadn't said no, either, and it wasn't a surprise when Erwin allowed himself to take both his hands in both his own, larger and rougher until they turned slick-skinned at the tips, his fingers linked together by veils of skin. His fingers soft. Delicately, he turned the captain's palms up, surveying the damage at their center, the burns still angry red.

Erwin passed a single careful thumb across the skin beneath the wounds and bowed to touch cold lips to the center of the captain's palms. When it only faintly tingled and Levi didn’t pull away, watching like he did with fascination etched on his face and the unshakable feeling that he wanted this, always had, Erwin lifted his unsettling blue eyes. 

“Let me,” he repeated for permission.

He licked at the wounds, his eyes not leaving Levi’s face.

The captain let out a growl. It flared from the inside, from underneath, and he would have torn himself free with just a sharp kick of his foot had he not trusted the man, the not-man, from a deep, hidden place within him.

Then, as quickly as it had been born, the fire died, settling like ash to leave way to a pleasant soothing of his skin. He stretched his fingers, his wrist still safe in Erwin’s grip. It didn’t hurt quite as bad as it had before. It didn't hurt anymore.

Levi wondered, unbidden, if he would taste salt were he to press his mouth to Erwin's hands.

 

*

 

_He observed the small ship caught in the throes of the waves, disappearing under until it seemed she would be swallowed whole, all to miraculously surface again after several endless seconds. Once. Twice. He wouldn't have bet on a third time, yet the mast still held somehow, the men still held somehow._

_Humans sailed the most stubborn waterways, even in storm seasons. Often, he had wanted to ask one of them whether they deemed it prowess, or if it was only pure folly._

_He swum around, keeping an eye on the ship above the water or, when it disappeared, under, and wondered how many of the mates he would bury that night. There was little he could do amidst a storm save for curbing the water a little, breaking the water a little. It wouldn't suffice._

 

_*_

 

“You’re extremely difficult to keep safe, Levi.” Erwin held himself up and onto the rocky ground where the captain rested. He observed his shirt, ripped in places, his naked feet. “Alive, even. Did you enjoy the calm seas? Did they bore you? I was afraid they'd bore you.” 

The captain lazily turned his head. “You’re too used to this,” he half-accused, half-stated. He was starting to remember, in fragments. In bits. He caught on threads of memories he hadn't known were his. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get rid of the last storm. They become unbending, after a while.”

“How many times?” Levi asked.

Erwin feigned thinking to himself. “A few,” he mused, in a tone that could have meant a hundred.

 

*

 

_There was nothing he could do for the lifeless bodies falling overboard. He counted six._

_When the seventh hit the waves, he finally rushed forward. This one had jumped. This one, for now, still lived._

_Erwin hauled him in his arms, heavier than he'd guessed, and made for the coast. It was blessedly close. He swum hours for the weight in his arm, for the man's head to stay above rolling, restless swells._

_When they reached shore, Erwin brought him as far as he could from the reach of the tide then, briefly, brushed the hair out of his face to see him properly. One moment, not more._

_They could never watch him back. They could never hear his voice. They could never know him, yet most were in too sorry a state to remember anything but the shock of a wreck and the relief of a breath afterwards. Erwin willed every man he saved never to return to the sea._

 

*

 

“It was never allowed,” the low voice explained, removed, and it sounded just assured enough to suggest he was used to the explanation, rehearsed. “Saving anyone.”

Careful.  
  
Levi wished he would be less so. He felt too comfortable, too curious, as if he were falling back into habits he didn't know he had, finding someone he didn't know he'd left.

“When I give you back to the land, you will forget again.”

The captain wanted to know if anyone had ever asked to stay before. And perhaps they had tried nonetheless. Perhaps it was why Erwin wouldn’t watch him when he spoke, just in case. 

His eyes looked somewhere between them at nothing in particular, and Levi would have believed he saw ghosts in the air for how fixated they stayed.

“And if you don’t give me back to the land?”

Levi watched, if Erwin wouldn't. He mapped the depth of a chest and the nets of veins barely hiding beneath translucent skin. Further down he catalogued the gradient of scales and tendrils on a tail and, higher, spent his time on a brow, traced the curve of a slightly crooked nose and the carved hollows of cheekbones, and failed to believe he could ever forget any of them.

"You'll drown."

 

*****

 

  _  
The man returned to the sea._

_Erwin caught him southward after not a dozen moons, and mistrusted his eyes so violently at first that he came much closer to the – new, slightly bigger – ship than he knew was reasonable, to be sure. But there was no mistaking his stature and ever-frowning brow, the high hold of his head and the swiftness of his legs, now bothered by only a gentle breeze._

_No one ever dared come back. No one should have been able to. Erwin started doubting his mind, then, a rush of fear igniting his spine as he considered the possibility that the ocean had noticed him stealing the bodies owed to its unforgiving hold, and had in turn decided to claim them again, in some other way._

_Erwin left._

_One moment, he contemplated leaving entirely, making a home out of any other corner of the world never to know whether he had been right in tempting the wickedness of the sea for one more sailor's fate. The next, he berated himself for even thinking about turning his back on the duty he bore._

_For months, Erwin roamed the oceans up north, made a detour east before he returned to warmer currents. He spotted the ship again under rainy skies, over distant reefs, along a sunlit seaboard. Had he not known it impossible, he would have thought she was following him._

_He accepted his fate and swum with her, after a while. He picked the safest ways or soothed a troubled wave. After a while, he could no longer tell who was leading the other._

_Then, as if to mock him, the captain started sailing alone at times._

_The small boat floated unhurried, the man contemplating the sea. The captain might have caught a glimmer of a tail, for he scrutinized the depths sometimes, his eye searching. Erwin felt the pang of guilt, harsher, at the thought of having been just careless enough to be seen._

_He thought himself lost for good when, a moment after, the man rose on his feet on thin wood, removed his ample shirt, and jumped._

_Erwin moved instantly with no regards for anything but the urgency in his veins._

_The next thing he knew was sharp white pain in his jaw. Seconds later, his ribs. The man had twisted himself free from the sudden grip and had retreated, his back up against the side of the boat, regarding Erwin with eyes harsher than he'd ever known an human to possess._

“ _The hell's with you?” he growled, annoyed, like he hadn't right then been facing a monster. Like he wasn't even afraid._

 _He saw the inhuman form, what with his tail and gills and their senseless attempt at a gesture of grandeur, and he wasn't afraid._  
  
“Forgive m-”, Erwin promptly started, then startled.

_He would have better done to cut his tongue instead. Perhaps his teeth would more than suffice for the simple task, if he put his heart to it. It was too late. Perhaps, if he left right away. Erwin schooled his face into perfect nothingness. Its side still throbbed. It was too late._

_He should never have saved anyone, been seen by anyone, talked to anyone. There were untold punishments for the first offense and, almost more frighteningly, torments bestowed upon his mind at the mere thought of the last._

_He had not meant to talk. He had never wanted to use his voice on a human at all._

_The man watched, oblivious of the treason perpetrated against him, and merely shrugged. He'd simply wanted to swim._

 

*****

 

“Levi, Levi.” Not-human hands carded through his hair, and Levi let them. He had done this before, too. He’d missed it. He'd missed it all his life. “If only you wouldn't want to come back so often,” Erwin said, and it was the gentlest thing in the world.  
  
Now, the captain remembered glimpses of faraway shores. He remembered being caught, safe, and thinking he wouldn't have minded being taken to the bottom of the ocean if he could witness half the sights Erwin told him hid in the depths, even for his then straining lungs. Once, they'd met whales singing their lament for their ears only. They'd watched the sun bleed over water on summer nights then, curled over a portion of rock or sand, they'd slept.

Levi remembered the constriction of his throat, the emptiness of his lungs, threatening, when he'd once tried to overstay his welcome.

 

*

 

_For all the strength Erwin knew he possessed, Levi too-easily succeeded at exhausting him. The man's show of graceful energy seemed never-ending, and he followed despite his lack of fins._

_Erwin's tail alone might have measured twice the size of Levi's entire body, yet it seemed the man's movements knew to make up for it, adjusting. Following._  
  
That evening, Erwin realized he had fallen asleep only when he woke up after a handful of hours, with his body craving saltwater and a riot of black hair resting somewhere near his hip.

_He moved, attempting and failing at not disturbing the man who soon looked up, very awake and challenging, as if about to inquire where Erwin thought he was going._

_He wasn't to blame. Humans could do nothing against nature's will, and the pull of creatures like Erwin. For centuries, it had remained the way they usually met their ends, were a voice to find their ear and turn the most resolved sailor into prey, offering himself up to be devoured, grateful and willing._

_There were tales of humans smiling even as fangs tore through their skin._

_It hardly mattered that Erwin wouldn't feast on humans. It hardly mattered that he hadn't meant to lure this man in. He hadn't meant for his tail to curl around Levi's body like it had then, either, yet it had done so all of its own; Erwin apologized briefly before he went, unwilling to lose more time, and slipped underwater._

  

*

 

Erwin waited for him to remember. Erwin was graceful about it. He confessed he tried saying it all every time, explaining it all.  
  
He didn't mind saying it all over again when they met, didn’t mind trying if it was for a day, if it was for a minute. Every second he could take. Levi would remember, until he wouldn't.

They had done slightly less each time. Levi had remembered slightly less. He'd started to lack the time

 The captain asked when the last time was. Not long ago, Erwin replied. The captain asked how much he'd remembered them. Not enough for the captain to wish hold him like he once had, Erwin didn't say.

 

*

 

“ _I don't wish to deceive you,” Erwin admitted easily. It was less troublesome than another apology, yet he knew he would have done a better job at convincing himself if he'd gotten up. The moss bed under his back felt too soft for refusals._

_This once, it was a hidden grotto that had offered them haven. Erwin had come to dread every next time. He would have given his sanity for them to never come, to come faster._

“ _Still thinking you're hot shit_ _,_ _” Levi countered from beside him, too close. He reconsidered. “If you try hard enough, you might be able to fool me into sleeping here again.” Erwin watched the soft skin of his arms, eyes following where it disappeared up his sleeves, and understood more than he'd ever had why humans insisted on covering themselves so much. He watched the skin of his neck, even softer. The man tempted him with nothing more than a smirk. “Maybe I'll play along.”_

_Erwin attempted deviating the train of thoughts by asking which of the nearby beaches Levi believed would be the most appropriate to leave him on this time, and which he thought would feel comfortable enough once he'd forgotten again. Levi turned his head; far too close. “None,” he replied, the ghost of his breath warm against Erwin's lips._

 

*

 

The captain had only blinked. He had barely known, watched, lived, he had never lived before, and he had to be sent away. He wanted to stay.  
  
He might have needed just a few more moments to try and recall. He felt the birth of an answer just within reach. If he had just a few more moments, he would have certainly found a name for the tingling in his limbs that made him want to never see the surface again. He could have died of it. But his time was running out, but he breathed less and less.

He would have died of it.  
  
He guessed he had asked before. He watched Erwin’s regretful eyes and didn’t need to be told he had tried before. That, alone and clueless once more, he would continue trying.

The captain could not ask to stay.

He accepted the webbed hand offered without a word to beckon him and enter the waters. They felt less stinging than he remembered. He had little time left. He breathed so little.   
  
“Swim with me,” he still demanded.

He wanted those arms around his waist again. He didn't have to tell.  
  
Erwin's tail already birthed swirling streams around them. Before they dived and water drowned his words for good, Levi thought of something else.

“Why bother saving me the first time?”

Erwin buried a quiet smile against the captain's shoulder. He plunged, his arms wrapped tight around Levi’s chest.

 

*

 

When the captain awoke, he laid again in the sand. Foam played at his feet.

He gasped for air as if he hadn’t breathed for days. He felt cold, first. He remembered his back hitting a rock when his back begun to hurt. For long minutes, he was tempted to rest his old bones there and wait for the tide to take him for good. 

He pushed the dripping hair from over his eyes and rose to an unsteady seat to watch the surrounding lands. The beach felt familiar. He might have led another ship here, once.

In the distance he made out the shape of one familiar wooden corpse — not quite a corpse, though it was stranded. It bore tiny shadows moving on its flank, and Levi let himself wish that they would be just as recognizable, kindling hope in his chest.

 It was odd that he still lived, but he was glad. He only needed to gather strength enough to walk. He needed to get to his crew and his maps, and his damn ship. He needed the ship if he wanted to sail.

He did not know why he wanted so terrifyingly to go back and embrace the waters again. Perhaps it was that the waters so restlessly tried to embrace him back. Perhaps it was the dodging, the dancing, the pull of the tide.

On a whim, the captain thought to kneel in soaked sand, and bend down to kiss the sea. He rose with thirst to his throat and salt on his lips. 

He had once told a bereaved mother that sailors’ graves were always the waves. He had long thought sailors were the ocean’s before they were even sons, daughters. The captain had long been the ocean's, for he missed something. He couldn't remember what it was. He was still searching.

 

 


End file.
